The Current Groove
Lydia Ko's consistency, Kai Kara-France fight week, Matt Henry's an ODI legend and three groovy tunes.
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Kiwi-NRL Spotlight: Central Auckland Healing With Sitili Tupouniua (Rugby League)
2022 Blackcaps Tracker: Glenn Phillips Continues... (Cricket)
2022 Blackcaps Tracker: Finn Allen Enters T20I Mode (Cricket)
2022 Blackcaps Tracker: Michael Bracewell The T2OI Prospect (Cricket)
Here’s How Indiah-Paige Riley Fits Into A Football Ferns Team In Need Of Creativity (Football)
Exploring The Cluster of Flying Kiwis Activities in Denmark (Football)
The Quotable Steven Adams: 2021-22 Edition (Basketball)
Scotty’s Word
Lydia Ko's consistent excellence continues after a tied-3rd finish at the Evian Championship. Rounds of 66, 69 and 68 had Ko loitering around the top-10 from the start of this tournament and Ko then rolled out a round of 66 with five birdies in her final stanza taking Ko up the leaderboard. This result is an almighty effort from Ko as she had a minor blip at the Women's PGA Championship with a 46T result before taking a month off.
Prior to that 46T, Ko had three consecutive top-five finishes. Ko now has five top-five finishes in her last seven events and while Aotearoa media zone in on LGPA Tour wins or lack of, I'm baffled by Ko's consistency at the highest level of women's golf. This level of consistency is fairly new even if Ko had quietly been climbing up the ladder to find a fresh peg of consistency where she can dwell. The days of Lydia Ko struggling are lost in a distant vista.
Ko made the cut and finished 25T or better in her first six tournaments, featuring a win at the Gainbridge LPGA event. Ko established that baseline of consistency and that is enough to put a player in the LPGA upper echelon.
In the next six tournaments Ko had results of 3T, 12T, 5th, 4T, 4th and 46T. That's four top-five finishes in six tournaments as Ko found a new level of consistency. This created intrigue as to how Ko responded to the 46T in her last outing. Ko was in a groove, got bumped out of that groove and went straight back into that groove in France.
Brooke Henderson won the Evian Championship and while she taps into Ko's consistency, Henderson has two missed cuts this year. Ko has none. I'll update Ko's stats and various rankings for Friday's email as they aren't live at the time of writing. The Women's Scottish Open is next later this week followed by the Women's Open also in Scotland, hopefully these are part of the current groove.
Funky note: Charntay Poko played NRLW for Newcastle Knights earlier this year and is now playing Farah Palmer Cup for Canterbury. Poko joins Katelyn Vaha'akolo in playing NRLW and Farah Palmer Cup this year.
It seems like a bunch of players from the first NRLW competition this year won't play in the upcoming event as Aussie teams build their rosters with more local players. Kiwi Ferns still need to prepare for a World Cup and these wahine are amazing athletes who hop between codes with ease, so I'm curious as to how this looks in coming weeks. Some might want to have a crack at Black Ferns selection for that World Cup, some might just want to play as much footy as possible. Some might have turned down NRLW gigs to raise their mana in Aotearoa. This is all very fluid and a funky wrinkle of the semi-pro wahine league and union landscape.
Today starts another hefty UFC fight week for City Kickboxing as Kai Kara-France fights Brandon Moreno in a interim flyweight championship bout. Blood Diamond has his second UFC fight listed as the first fight for UFC 277 against Orion Cosce and I'll whip up previews for these fights later in the week. On this gloomy Monday, I'm setting the scene for Kara-France and wider City Kickboxing mahi.
Kara-France lost to Moreno late in 2019 and a year later Moreno became flyweight champion in the first of three fights against Deiveson Figueiredo. The first fight was officially a draw but Moreno became champ via some points/rules stuff, before Moreno won the second fight. Moreno then lost the third fight to Figueiredo earlier this year and Figueiredo is now out injured, leading to this interim bout between Kara-France and Moreno. The winner will fight Figueiredo.
After losing to Moreno, Kara-France had a win then a loss against Brandon Royval. This was followed by three consecutive wins for Kara-France since the start of 2021 and through his performances, Kara-France commanded this interim contest. Had Kara-France not grabbed two finishes and a dominant win, the UFC would probably have waited for Figueiredo to be ready for his fourth fight against Moreno.
City Kickboxing sits fairly even right now. Israel Adesanya is a champion who keeps winning and Alex Volkanovski spent time in Auckland ahead of his most recent win, strengthening the CKB vibe. Everything else has been a bit underwhelming as Dan Hooker, Brad Riddell and Shane Young have two consecutive losses each. Carlos Ulberg had a win in his second UFC fight and Blood Diamond stumbled in his first UFC fight.
Take Volkanovski out of this Aotearoa equation and Adesanya is only joined by Kara-France as notable winning fighters right now. Kara-France seems to love Aotearoa a bit more than Adesanya and he is the only CKB fighter at the moment who could demand a big fight in Aotearoa if things fall in his favour. Had Hooker or Riddell kept winning, they would have been in the mix to headline in Aotearoa.
Now Kara-France has a crack at interim success which is even more intriguing as Kara-France fell short of the flyweight elite previously and has doubled back for another run. Kara-France started his journey as far back as 2009 (now 29yrs). Kara-France had back to back losses in 2011/12, then three losses in a row across 2014/15 before entering the UFC in 2018. Combine those with two losses (not consecutive) as he approached the top of the flyweight division more recently for a young bloke who has dealt with professional adversity throughout his career, encapsulating CKB mana better than any other fighter.
If you don't vibe with Adesanya for whatever reason, Kara-France deserves your attention.
Will Young returned to Kiwi County Tour action with scores of 2 and 12, slotting straight in as skipper for Northamptonshire. This is a low key lean patch for Young as he had scores of 1, 0 and 3 in ODIs against Ireland, after 133 runs @ 22.16avg in Tests against India. Young will have a solid stint of County cricket to get back amongst the runs.
Young put up two low scores against Lancashire and Will Williams took 7w for Lancashire, but Williams didn't dismiss Young thankfully. Williams also had scores of 5* and 29* which gives him three consecutive not-out innings and a batting record of 66 runs @ 66avg. That's worth a giggle but Williams' bowling mahi is exceptional; 18w @ 21avg/2.23rpo.
Williams has now played four games for Lancashire and Pakistan's Hasan Ali is the only bowler with more wickets and a better average than Williams. This is exactly what Williams has done for Canterbury in the past five years and while he's unlikely to feature for Canterbury much in the coming years, this reflects nicely on the Plunket Shield landscape.
I get a Lydia Ko vibe with Matt Henry. Ko's LPGA consistency is matched by Henry's wicket-taking consistency. Henry is playing for Kent and along with his 60 runs @ 136.36sr, Henry took 3w @ 33avg/2.60rpo against Warwickshire. There's nothing amazing about 3w in a County game, but Henry has now taken a wicket or more in his last 14 innings (Tests, ODIs, warm ups and County cricket). This is taken from Henry's Cricinfo profile which only lists his last 10 games, so Henry's streak of wickets may be longer than 14inns.
Henry was the best kiwi bowler in ODIs vs Ireland with 7w @ 24.28avg. Henry's ODI average of 25.22 is ranked 5th all-time for Aotearoa bowlers and he is a smidge behind Trent Boult's 25.21avg. Henry's ODI bowling strike-rate is better than all four bowlers ranked ahead of him...
Shane Bond: 147w @ 20.88avg/29.2sr.
Richard Hadlee: 158w @ 21.56avg/39.1sr.
Chris Pringle: 103w @ 23.87avg/32.1sr.
Trent Boult: 169w @ 25.21av/30.2sr.
Matt Henry: 110w @ 25.22avg/28.5sr.
Ol’ mate Wildcard has that pesky covid thing, so that’s it for today. Big up yourself.